


Kings

by firstnameagent



Series: The Fake AH Crew (& all their demons) [3]
Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Blood, F/M, Fake AH Crew, GTA, Gen, M/M, Stitches, pretentious use of the french language, what's better than this guys being dudes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-15
Updated: 2015-07-17
Packaged: 2018-04-09 11:10:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4346330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstnameagent/pseuds/firstnameagent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ryan Haywood, supposed terror of the city, and Geoff Ramsey, supposed ruler of it, live with the rest of their crew in a penthouse overlooking what's theirs.</p><p>They mainly just end up making fun of each other (and occasionally bleeding in each other's arms).</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Skull

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to part 3! As with the others you can technically read this by itself as its own mini arc but it relies on information from the previous two stories (though not as heavily). It's also a tone shift from those chapters a bit; welcome to pretentious me. 
> 
> Also, I didn't tag it as such but you can read this as Ryan/Geoff if your heart is so inclined. Even though Ryan tells you not to. What the hell does he know, really. [Edit: Yeah ok]

**Yesterday**

If he’d had the chance to pick his own moniker, he probably wouldn’t have gone with The Skull. 

It sounds, for one, like a cheap supervillain name. He’d thought it _was_ a cheap supervillain name, but Michael had informed him that nah, you’re thinking of The Punisher ‘cause his logo’s a skull, and he’s actually an antihero. In any case, it wasn’t exactly the most dignified of titles.

But the Los Santos news department was not the most dignified of news departments, so The Skull was here to stay. 

Geoff had told him if he wanted to change it up he could just stop wearing the mask. But sue him, he liked the damn mask. It looked creepy in a way that a strong jawline and well-maintained hair did not.

He strolls out to the kitchen late one night and finds Geoff holding it in his hands. He’s rubbing his thumb over the cheek of it, the place where a bullet just barely missed the other day. When Ryan walks up, he doesn’t even look surprised; just gently puts the mask back down like he doesn’t want to hold it while Ryan’s watching.

“Can’t sleep?” Ryan asks, pouring himself a glass of water. He notices an open bottle of whiskey on the counter next to him.

“Don’t want to,” Geoff admits. “You?” He laces his fingers behind his head and leans back, watching Ryan with his criminal-mastermind expression fixed on his face. It’s always been a little intimidating, that gaze. Like if you’re not careful he’ll reach right into you, pluck out pieces, and not bother to put them back. 

Probably why he owns a six million dollar penthouse and half the city.

“Bit jittery,” Ryan admits. “Few close calls recently. Few other things.”

Because really, what’s got him staying up with a racing mind until three in the morning? The fact that he nearly died two times in three days, or the recent upheaval of a boy he’d buried in his mind at the same time they’d buried him in the Georgia dirt? 

“You and Ray been spending a lot of time together,” Geoff nods. He takes a sip of whiskey. "Kid distracting you? I’ll give him a talk.”

The corners of his mouth twitch upward in a grin at his own joke. He even cracks his knuckles for added emphasis, and Ryan gives him a polite chuckle in return.

“We’re not having sex,” Ryan admits, because that’s exactly what Geoff’s arched eyebrow and devilish grin wants to know. And just like that, an opportunity for deflection: a subject change, a morsel for Geoff to latch onto. “Though I’m not opposed to the idea.”

Geoff laughs—a real laugh, not a pity laugh—and nods. “You and me both, buddy.”

Ryan clucks his tongue. “Jack would have your dick.”

“Jack _already_ has my dick,” Geoff grins. “That’s the problem.”

“Ha, ha.”

“I know. I’m a goddamn comedian.”

And this. This has always felt too easy. Chatting with Geoff at late hours of the night, planning jobs after the rest of them have gone to bed, Geoff drinking rum and Ryan drinking coke and the two of them falling into easy rhythm. It isn’t love; he sat himself down once and thought about whether it was and decided against it. It’s something else, something less complicated than that. Something that feels dangerous all the same.

 _Geoff’s a lynchpin_ , Ryan thinks, but he doesn’t know what that means for him.

“Earth to Ryan,” Geoff says, steering Ryan’s eyes back towards him. “Hey, bud. You’re doing that thing again. Staring off into space and looking all contemplative and shit.”

Ryan shrugs, trying to shake off the weight. “Someone in this crew’s gotta think more than five seconds into the future.”

“Hmm,” Geoff says, rubbing a hand over his beard. “Nah. I don’t like it. Cut that shit out.”

Ryan laughs and swallows the rest of his water before speaking. “Will do, boss.”

“Good.” Geoff picks up the skull mask, tosses it to Ryan almost faster than Ryan can catch it. Almost. He’s gotten good over the years. “Now get some sleep, alright? Only got a couple nights to catch up, yeah?”

“Mhmm,” Ryan agrees. “Do my best. You too.”

But Geoff just makes a low scoffing noise, ice clinking in his glass, and Ryan doesn’t try again.

-

**Three Days Later**

“What the _hell_ ,” Geoff grunts, “did I _say_ about getting _shot_.”

Ryan opens his eyes for the first time in a few minutes, looking down at Geoff, kneeling on the bathroom floor and holding a soaking red rag to Ryan’s side. “Don’t do it?”

“Don’t do it,” Geoff repeats. “Don’t fuckin’ do it. Don’t get shot! How hard is that?”

Ryan narrows his eyes. “In a firefight? Gee, wonder.”

Geof picks up a fresh rag. Had the other one been white originally too? “Oh, can it. Jesus Christ, you’re bleeding all over the place.”

“It’s a flesh wound,” Ryan mumbles.

“Yeah, and I’m the fuckin’ knights who say ni. Shut up and let me stop the god damn bleeding.”

Ryan tries to laugh and ends up just leaning his head back. His hands and feet have gone cold, but in the homeostasis kind of way, not the imminent death kind of way. He’s not going to die—he knows this partially from experience, partially because he’s reluctant to believe he’d die on the bathroom floor with Geoff’s hands shoved inside his rib cage. He’d like to think he’d at least bleed out somewhere more dramatic. 

“You still with me, buddy?” Geoff says, and all the faux-irritation is gone, just fear and that cracking in his voice that means he loves you. 

“You told me to shut up,” Ryan reminds him. Geoff picks up his hand and places it over his own wound; it takes him a minute to realize he’s supposed to be applying pressure. He does, and Geoff crawls over to the cabinet to grab their makeshift sewing kit.

“I meant stop being an asshole,” Geoff clarifies, tearing open the suture package. He gently takes Ryan’s hand away, wincing when he looks at the wound. Ryan chooses to keep his eyes on Geoff instead. “Keep talking or else I’m gonna think you’ve kicked it.”

Ryan nods, searching for something to say. “The others okay?” he finally asks, because first of all he only vaguely remembers hearing them in his ear after Geoff started rushing him back to the penthouse, and secondly because nothing else really matters.

“More than you,” Geoff says. “First stitch here, watch out.” And Ryan grits his teeth, squeezes hard into Geoff’s arm as the needle goes through his skin. “Don’t be a fuckin’ baby. Anyway, yeah, Michael’s got some burns and Gav dislocated something or other, but when the hell doesn’t he. Jack and Ray say they’re fine, but that’s Jack and Ray talking.”

Ryan tries to laugh and is immediately stifled by a hand over his mouth; Geoff’s, coated in Ryan’s blood, and that would be more disgusting if it weren’t keeping him alive. “You shake when you laugh,” Geoff explains. “Gotta keep this steady.”

Ryan nods, still not watching, as Geoff puts him back together. 

“They coming home now?” Ryan asks, for something else to say.

“Yeah,” Geoff confirms, biting off part of the suture with his teeth, which absolutely can’t be sanitary. “Should be here in about ten minutes. Whole thing didn’t go so well, ‘specially after you got yourself shot—”

“Nice use of the passive voice, asshole.”

“Any time. But we got some cash, some goods. Keep our wheels greased.”

Ryan knows full well they’ve got enough cash and enough goods stashed around this city to keep their wheels greased monetarily for years without pulling another heist. But it’s not those wheels Geoff’s ever been worried about; it’s the itch, the constant pressure-cooker inside each one of them that needs a release, needs to be drowned in gunfire and bank robberies. 

He knows how to pick ‘em, that’s for sure.

“Can’t win them all,” is what he says instead.

“Can if you’re Geoff Ramsey,” Geoff retorts, “and your crew doesn’t jump in front of bullets.”

“You’re just bitter because you had to leave early.”

“You’re god damn right.”

Ryan blinks his eyes, wonders how much truth there is to that statement. Starts to calculate it, watching the way Geoff’s face wrinkles in concentration. His eyes are set and he’s biting his bottom lip and he almost looks peaceful like this, stitching Ryan up.

Ryan smiles a bit. “Didn’t have to drive me home,” he says. 

“Yeah, I’m gonna watch you bleed out on the concrete,” Geoff sneers.

“I mean you, specifically,” Ryan clarifies. “You’re the boss. Coulda had someone else—fuck, watch it—”

“I’m almost _done_ , crybaby.”

“—coulda had someone else drive.”

“Nah,” Geoff says, and for a second when he looks up Ryan thinks there’s something in his eyes, something sad and secret, but then it’s gone as he sits back and admires his handiwork. “Good as new.”

Ryan looks down and gingerly touches the sutures across his skin. They’re ragged, looking for all the world like they were put in by a slightly panicked forty-year-old who drinks too much and sleeps too little, but they’ll do. They usually do.


	2. Crossbones

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I lied, apparently, when I said Ryan wasn't that gay for Geoff

Of all the things the crew does well, monogamy was never one of them.

People seemed to think they were all fucking each other more often than not, but that was usually off the mark. There were no clear boundary lines, no constant ties—apart from the one between Geoff and Jack, but that was something older than any of the rest of them, as much a constant as the city itself. They did what they wanted, when they wanted, with whomever they wanted. Pairs or more formed and bounced apart at a whim. As fast and volatile as any heist they’d ever pulled.

Michael was the main complication. Michael and his insistence that men weren’t his thing. Michael and his constant complaints about his luck, ending up in the middle of a clusterfuck of other men and Jack, the most intimidating woman in the city. 

Ryan had begun to understand some of Michael’s frustration. He hadn’t found himself in the middle of any of it in a while. And with Ray’s bedroom next to his—he sighs loudly and tries to bury earplugs deeper into his ears, drowning out the noises Gavin was making next door.

(He remembers, too vividly sometimes, the last time he and Gavin had done something like that—both of them shaken up after a robbery gone wrong, hands weak and hearts racing, Gavin whispering, whining, _it’s too loud, it’s too bloody loud up here, Ry, just make it fucking stop, yeah?_ )

(He had.)

That’s where Geoff finds him: lying in bed, attempting to ignore sounds of two of his best friends, unwarranted memories racing through his head.

“Haywood,” Geoff hisses, nudging the door open just wide enough to peek his head in. Ryan takes the earplugs out. “C’mere.”

Ryan doesn’t need to be told twice. He slips out of bed, still dressed, and follows Geoff out the door. Geoff’s clutching a bottle of whiskey by the neck, half-drained. He walks over to largest balcony, off the living room, and gestures for Ryan to shut the door behind them.

Ryan shivers in the city air. He looks up like he might see stars overhead; he sees one, maybe two, but the lights are too bright for anything more. He wonders if someone like Jack, like Ray, growing up in the city, has ever seen the stars like they’re meant to be seen. 

Geoff has. Ryan can tell by the way he scowls at the excuse for a sky that Los Santos has to offer. 

“Over there,” Geoff says, pointing. He takes a swig as he waits for Ryan to find it. It takes a minute, just another pinpoint of chaos against the landscape, but he sees: a burning orange building, smoke climbing above the rooftops.

“Jack and Michael?” Ryan asks, and Geoff nods. He’d forgotten they were supposed to run a job tonight. It was a small one, just the two of them necessary, in and out of another crew’s warehouse to hopefully weaken their supply chain. 

“She texted, told me they’re all-clear,” Geoff explains. “I wanted to see if I could find it from here. Thought you might like to see it too.”

“It’s neat,” Ryan agrees, and even though Geoff laughs at his adjective choice he doesn’t take it back. “You think Gavin and Ray wanna have a look?”

Geoff groans and rolls his entire head back. “Jesus Christ,” he mutters. “Those two are like rabbits lately.”

Ryan grins. “It’s good for them,” he offers.

“Vegetables are good for you, doesn’t mean they’re not disgusting.”

But he’s got a smile in his eyes, if carefully hidden from his face. He can’t help himself. He’s happy for the boys, even if they do act like horny teenagers—they practically are, Ryan has to remind himself sometimes—shoving their hands down each other’s pants at the slightest opportunity. 

“You love them,” Ryan teases, and Geoff scoffs and doesn’t say no.

They watch the building burn for another few moments in silence. Ryan tries to imagine Jack and Michael snaking through the streets back to them. Strange to imagine them out there on an adrenaline high, and Gavin and Ray tucked into the bedroom on a different kind of high, and he and Geoff in the middle of it all. 

Geoff’s voice cuts through the night. “I didn’t want you to die without me there.”

Ryan frowns, mouth falling open a bit. He wishes he had to think about what Geoff means, but—he brings his right hand up to his left side, brushing up against the still-tender stitches holding his skin in place. Geoff takes a long breath in and a longer breath out.

“I turned out okay,” Ryan reminds him. 

Geoff shakes his head, hands clenched together and white-knuckled. “I know that,” he says, voice carrying none of the tension of his body. “I’m just sayin’. ‘S why I drove you home myself. Not Jack, or anyone else.”

Ryan nods slowly, processing this new packet of information about his boss. Come to think of it, it makes sense; Geoff always rides home with the wounded, even when it’s dangerous. When they’re under pursuit or the car’s too full. He’s there on the ground, in the middle of the action, exactly where a crew leader shouldn’t be.

“So that’s all,” he coughs. “I don’t want any of you to die without me there, you got it?”

Ryan starts to laugh. As if any man could dictate such a thing. As if Geoff Ramsey, standing on his balcony clutching at a bottle of whiskey, could demand it. But then Ryan looks at his face, at his hands laden with ink and scars alike, and thinks for a brief, impossible moment that maybe he could.

“You got it, boss,” Ryan says softly, and he throws in the two-fingered salute, their silent go signal when talking even over the comms is too loud. Geoff doesn’t miss it; he mirrors it, half-smile and all.

Geoff shifts his jaw around in that way that means he’s thinking of saying something else, but he’s not yet sure what. Ryan knows to give him time; he leans over the balcony and watches the cars go by for a moment while Geoff drinks and gathers his thoughts. 

He’s heard the French phrase _l’appel du vide_ about a hundred times since joining the criminal underground—hotshots who think they’re educated like to throw it around, justifying what they do to themselves and to others. The call of the void. The voice in your head that peers over a precipice and dares you to jump.

Ryan doesn’t feel that leaning over the railing and looking at the cars. He feels it when he leans back and looks at Geoff.

“People say I’m too god damn soft,” Geoff says, and Ryan stirs back into alertness. “Can you fucking believe that? Me. Too soft.” He shakes his head, takes a swig, and affects a high-pitched whining lilt. “ _Aww, Ramsey, gonna go home and cry to your boys?_ Fuckin’ please. Rival crew leaders, they think they can kick my ass because I give more than half a damn about the lives of the people in my crew. Think you all make me weak or some shit.”

The steady stream of profanity and anger has tightened his fingers around the bottle again, and he swirls it around with a lazy wrist.

“You disagree?” Ryan says evenly, not because he wonders but because he wants to hear it from Geoff’s mouth.

“Fuck you,” Geoff says. “You little shits are the only reason I’m still breathing, you know that? Wouldn’t last half a god damn day without you, any one of you.” 

“Hmm,” Ryan nods, taking in the words. “Good thing the rest of the city doesn’t know that or we’d be fucked.”

He says it with a smile but Geoff returns a frown, a hardline smile with worry pressed into every crease of his face. “Don’t you even fuckin’ joke about that,” he warns.

Ryan raises his hands in a surrender. “C’mon, Geoff,” he taunts. “As if we’d ever let that happen.”

“I’m serious,” Geoff continues, and he’s still keyed up. “I’m fuckin’ scared of that, alright? Someone getting to me through all of you. You don’t breathe a word of this conversation to anyone, Haywood, but I’m seriously fuckin’ scared of that.”

Ryan realizes, in moments like these, that the man has spent so long building such a careful persona that sometimes he thinks he’s fooled his crew, too. He wants to tell Geoff they all know that already. He wants to tell him they worry about him, too, that somewhere deep inside they all know he’s not invincible. 

“Scout’s honor,” is what he says instead. 

“Good,” Geoff says, fast and hoarse. He stands up and pats Ryan on the back. “You can stay out here as long as you want, bud. I’m gonna go up to bed.”

 _To wait for Jack._ Another thing Ryan thinks, almost says, and doesn’t.

“Thanks,” he substitutes. 

Geoff leaves and Ryan hears the sliding glass door slam shut behind him. He finds the orange spot on the horizon, the smoke starting to dwindle, and closes his eyes. 

It’s not love, what he feels for Geoff. But God, sometimes he wonders. If they’d known each other back home. If either of them still knew what home felt like. If they didn’t feel so alive so close to death. If a million things were different, would that be, too?

He doesn’t know. He goes to sleep.


End file.
